


but for now wait

by cynical_optimist



Series: you know you can work it out again [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Mornings, Swearing, Test anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 01:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10294070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynical_optimist/pseuds/cynical_optimist
Summary: “Hey,” Holster says, voice and smile and everything still too soft, still too much in this light, this early in the morning, when Ransom’s feeling raw and vulnerable and a step away from failure. “Lunch at Jerry’s after my classes?”-Of early mornings and the impossibility of humanity.





	

**Author's Note:**

> why do i do this to myself. edited by the amazing [sarah](http://douchenuts.tumblr.com), who is everything i could ever wish for in a beta and also a friend. title from woodlock's [forever ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzJGD9yGwA).

The mornings that Ransom wakes up in Holster’s arms are simultaneously the best and worst mornings in all his years of experience.

The journey to wakefulness is slow and pleasant, and Ransom is consistently guilty of prolonging it. He keeps his eyes closed, breaths steady, legs and arms unmoving from where they’ve unfailingly twined themselves with Holster’s, and revels in the dim half-light of that moment between sleep and not, between comfort and moving out of his best friend’s arms like he always does, always must, between the need to leave and the desire to stay. Sometimes, he does drift back into sleep, lulled into peacefulness and caught in inertia. Other mornings, this morning, he lays awake for what seems like hours and seconds and long stretches of eternity, and these are the worst ones, because he has nothing but his own thoughts and the knowledge that, soon, he will have to leave the bed and the room and, one day, the college, and all of those carry the possibility of  Holster not following.

There is a certain peculiarity, Ransom finds, to discovering the person that is perfect for you in pretty much every way relatively early on in life. Behind the thrill, the security, and the perfect bro moments, there is a thin line of dread that he can never truly escape.

What would it be to have found Holster, only to lose him to circumstances that neither of them can control, that aren’t particularly novel or unique or even unexpected?

Ransom presses his lips together and burrows closer to Holster, forgetting for a moment that he had been pretending to be asleep. He breathes deeply, steadily, clutching at his best friend’s shirt, hanging desperately on the illusion of sleep. Eventually, he will have to get up, he knows, but this is not something he is ready to give up, just yet.

Ransom breathes in the atmosphere, the early morning lethargy, the peace that he finds so difficult to grasp as the end of the year approaches and the exams become more frequent and more weighted. He closes his eyes again, wonders absently what time it is.

After a few minutes, Holster’s fingers start running up and down the length of Ransom’s arm, the only sign that he’s awake. Ransom blinks, knows this is when he should probably leave. He has classes, study-- he doesn’t have time to lay here, doing nothing. It’s not fair to Holster, to keep him here like this when he likely has the same.

Ransom doesn’t move.

“Time’s it?” Holster asks finally, and Ransom rolls out of the circle of his arms to check his phone.

“Like, eight-thirteen.”

Holster hums, reaches for Ransom with a heaviness that shows just how awake he isn’t. “Cool. Sleeping.”

Ransom needs to get up. He needs to get out of bed, start studying, maybe pester Bitty for some breakfast before he gets lost in what Holster calls “coral reef mode”. But here, in this moment, where all he can feel is the warmth they share, all he wants to do is stay.

“Don’t you have class?” he asks instead.

Holster groans.

Ransom sighs, pokes him in the side lightly. “Class, bro. Grades. Graduation.”

Holster’s groan only grows in intensity.

“While I totally understand your attitude, you’ve gotta get to class, dude,” Ransom huffs.

The blond opens his eyes finally, and Ransom is struck again, as he is every time, by their intensity. Even when he’s half-asleep, even when he spent half the fucking night comforting Ransom, he looks at him--at everyone, maybe, but he likes to hold onto this, likes to pretend it’s just for him--with such indescribable  _ feeling _ that his breath gets caught somewhere between his throat and his lungs.

“Come on, bro,” he says, voice suddenly hoarse’; he reminds himself that Holster isn’t even wearing his glasses, that there’s no reason to take it to heart. “I won’t be the reason you fail.”

Holster blinks owlishly, then rolls onto his back and rubs at his eyes. “Wouldn’t be your fault,” he replies through a yawn, and Ransom knows he’s right, knows he stayed awake out of his own volition, but that doesn’t make the heavy ache of guilt any less potent.

Ransom yawns in response, then glares. “Asshole.”

He chuckles. “Wow, you cut deep.” He fumbles for his glasses, and Ransom, who is closer, hands them to him. It’s more familiar a routine than it should be.

As Holster sits and stretches, Ransom looks at the top bunk, then back at him. It shouldn’t be right for an athlete to look so goddamned  _ soft _ in the morning, but here he is, staring at Holster as he struggles out of bed, bumbling around the room without any coffee to wake him up, hair sticking up on one side. Someone who’s 6’4” can’t be adorable. It defies logic, and also every known law in the universe. Honestly, Holster’s entire existence defies every known law in the universe.

Holster apparently isn’t the only one in need of caffeine, then.

Ransom rubs his face, still not moving from the bed, and listens to Holster get ready for class. He’ll have to get up soon, he thinks with the familiar tinge of anxiety that accompanies upcoming exams and the need to study. He didn’t get everything he needed to done the night before, so he’ll have to work harder today to catch up. He can’t force himself to regret it as much as he should, and that’s the worst part.

“Hey,” Holster says, voice and smile and  _ everything _ still too soft, still too much in this light, this early in the morning, when Ransom’s feeling raw and vulnerable and a step away from failure. “Lunch at Jerry’s after my classes?”

Ransom looks toward the desk, at the piles of textbooks and notes and flashcards and everything he has left to memorise, everything that keeps his fate secure, and grimaces. “I have to--”

“That’s, like, four hours of studying, Rans. You’re a bio major, you know the effects of not eating on actual memory retention.” Holster says, shoving his books into his bag.

Well, yes, but there’s a part of him that thinks he can simply defy reason and human biology, a part that’s irrational and impossible to argue with. Perhaps he will be the one to break the rules, to actually gain something from last minute cramming, to power through his limits and still pass.

Ransom and Holster are impossible beings, then, at least in Ransom’s mind.

He sighs, nods. “My shout,” he says, and can hardly bear to see Holster’s bright grin form. It sparks a grin of his own, and he finds himself smiling like an idiot at his best friend while said best friend does the same back.

“See you in a couple hours, bro,” Holster says, still grinning, as he leaves, and Ransom finally forces himself out of bed and to the desk.

He opens up the same textbook he’d been going through last night, and thinks, still bleary, that maybe it’s right, that he and Holster would both be impossible.

Perhaps, if they are impossible and defiant and stand against the will of the universe, they will be able to stand together. If the rules didn’t apply to them, could he lose Holster in the endless dredge of separate lives and unresolved stress and calls missed and rarely returned and texts that just stop coming? Or would he wake up like this every morning, warm and comfortable and known?

Ransom turns back to his biology textbook. At the end of the day, he and Holster are human beings, flesh and blood and bone, atoms that make molecules that make cells that make life. That should discourage him, should temper his hope, and yet--

It is humans that wake up every day, humans that fall for each other and make friends and love with all their hearts, with all their souls, should such a thing exist. It is humans that make lives together.

And it is his human heart that aches and beats and yearns for another, so perhaps it will be his human hands that will carve out a future that is bright and soft and in defiance of all logic. This human impossibility, in all its wonder and glory, is all he has, and it is all he can do to hope it is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> come chat to me about holsom on [my tumblr](boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com) if you feel like it. thank <3.


End file.
